Spider-Man Director Sam Raimi Reveals What It Would Take for Him to Direct Again, Teases Next Film

Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi, who last released feature film Oz the Great and Powerful in 2013, says he’s waiting on the right script to get him back into the director’s chair.

“I’d love to [direct again] — I love directing,” Raimi said at New York Comic Con Thursday when participating in a panel for The Grudge, where Raimi serves as producer through his Ghost House Pictures. “It’s hard though — it’s hard when you don’t have the best script to direct. I’m waiting to find a script that really speaks to me, something that everyone would love, but is really personal to me, too. Then I would be back in the director’s chair.”

Asked about his next project, Raimi said he’s scripting a new movie with brother Ivan Raimi, his co-writer on Spider-Man 3 and Drag Me to Hell. “What’s next Is I’m writing a movie with my brother Ivan, and I’m hoping to make that,” Raimi said.

Since Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, where Raimi again directed his Spider-Man star James Franco, Raimi helmed episodes of short-lived comedy-drama Rake and an episode of Ash vs Evil Dead. He also served as one of three directors on 2017 short film The Black Ghiandola, starring Johnny Depp and Spider-Man trilogy star J.K. Simmons, on behalf of the Make a Film Foundation.

When promoting Alexandre Aja’s alligator-infested action-horror Crawl over the summer, Raimi admitted he still thinks about his unmade Spider-Man 4 “all the time.”

“It’s hard not to, because each summer another Spider-Man film comes out! So when you have an unborn one, you can’t help but think what might have been,” Raimi told Yahoo. “But I try to focus on what will be, and not look into the past.”

In a 2014 interview with Nerdist — after Sony Pictures rebooted Spider-Man with the Andrew Garfield-led Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel — Raimi said the movie that ended his Spidey trilogy was “awful.”

“It’s a movie that just didn’t work very well. I messed up with that third Spider-Man. People hated me for years. They still hate me for it,” Raimi said of the 2007 blockbuster that grossed $890 million worldwide. “I tried to make it work, but I didn’t really believe in all the characters. So that couldn’t be hidden from people who loved Spider-Man. If the director doesn’t love something, it’s wrong of them to make it when so many other people love it.”

The Raimi-produced The Grudge, directed by Nicolas Pesce and starring Betty Gilpin, John Cho, William Sadler and Lin Shaye, opens January 3.